Part 3

Not all those who give themselves up to this odious and criminal habit, are, it is true, so severely punished; but there are none that do not suffer for it in a less or greater degree. The frequency of the act, the difference of constitutions, many adventitious circumstances, may occasion considerable differences.

The pernicious consequences that have fallen under my observation, are, _first_, a total disorder of the stomach, which in some discovers itself by loss of appetite, or by a depravation or irregularity of its cravings; in others, by acute pains, especially in the time of digestion, by habitual nauseas or vomitings, which resist all remedies, while the cause, the bad practice, is continued. _Secondly_, A weakening of the organs of respiration, whence frequently result dry husky coughs, almost always a hoarseness, a failure of voice, and a shortness of breath, on any little violence of motion. _Thirdly_, A total relaxation of the nervous system.

It does not require a very deep knowledge of the animal œconomy, to be sensible that the three prementioned causes are capable of producing all the diseases of languor, and experience every day proves their producing them. The first ill consequences of them, to such as are guilty of self-pollution, besides those I have just pointed out, are a considerable diminution of strength, a less or greater paleness, sometimes a slight but continual jaundice, often pimples, which come and disappear only to make room for fresh ones, and are constantly reproducing themselves all over the face, but especially in the forehead, the temples, and about the nose; a notable leanness; an astonishing sensibility to the changes of weather, especially to cold; a languor in the eyes, a weakening of the sight, a great impairment of the faculties, especially of the memory.

“I am sensible (a patient writes me) that this wretched practice has diminished the strength of my intellectual faculties, and especially of my memory[35].”

I beg leave to insert here the fragments of some letters, which, combined together, will form a complete enough description of the natural disorders produced by self-pollution. The language in which I wrote (the Latin) hindered me from making use of them in the first edition of this work.

“I had the misfortune (says the same person, who was by this time arrived at the age of maturity,) like too many other young people, to suffer myself to be carried away by the violence of a habit, as pernicious for the body as for the soul. Age, indeed, assisted by reason, has, for some time past, corrected this wretched inclination: but the ill is done. The disorder and extraordinary sensibility of the nervous system, and the accidents resulting therefrom, are accompanied with a weakness, a restlessness, a _tædium vitæ_, a sense of distress, that all seem to vie with each other to afflict me. I am consumed by an almost continued loss of seed. My face is become as it were cadaverous, so pale, so livid. The weakness of my body renders all my motions laborious: that of my legs is often so great, that they can hardly support me, and that I dare not go out of my room. My digestions are so ill performed, that my aliments come from me, scarcely more altered, three or four hours after I have taken them, than when I took them into my stomach. My breast gets stuffed with phlegm, the load of which throws me into a state of anguish, and my expectorations into a state of faintness. Here you have a succinct account of my causes of complaint, which are still aggravated by the melancholic certainty I have acquired, that every day will yet be worse than the precedent ones. In a word, I cannot conceive that a human creature can be afflicted with greater evils than I am. Without the particular grace of Providence, I could hardly bear up under so heavy a load.”

It was not without shuddering that I red, in another patient’s letter, the following terrible expressions, which reminded me of some in the (English) treatise of _Onania_.

“If religion did not restrain me, I should have already put an end to a life, which is so much the more miserable for its being my own fault that it is so.”

There cannot surely be in the world a more intolerable condition than that of anguish: a state of pain is nothing in comparison with it; and when it is superadded to a croud of other evils, it is not at all strange that the sufferer should wish for death as his greatest good, and regard life as a real misfortune, if the name of life can be given to so deplorable a state.

_Vivere cum nequeam, sit mihi posse mori;_ _Dulce mori miseris, sed mors optata recedit._ M.

The following description is less long, and not quite so terrible as the first one.

“I had the misfortune, in my tenderest youth, being, to the best of my remembrance, not above eight or ten years of age, to contract that pernicious habit of self-pollution, which very early ruined my constitution; but especially, for some years past, I find myself under an extraordinary oppression: my nerves are extremely weak, my hands without strength, always shaking, and in a perpetual sweat. I have violent pains in my stomach, arms, legs, sometimes in my loins, and in my breast. I am often troubled with a cough; my eyes are always weak and dim; I have a devouring appetite, and yet I grow very lean, and never but look extremely ill.”

In the Section on the method of cure, will be seen the success of the remedies in this case.

“Nature herself (says a third correspondent) opened my eyes to the cause of that languor under which I found myself, and to the danger of that abyss into which I was precipitating myself. Pimples or eruptions on the part which was the instrument of my crime, and the faintness I felt in the midst of the act itself, left me no room to doubt of the cause of my suffering.”

I might add here a great number of cases of this nature, on which I have been consulted since the second edition of this work, but they would be useless repetitions. I shall only confine myself to two or three of the most recent.

A man in the flower of his age wrote to me, but the other day, in the following terms.

“In my early youth I contracted a most dreadful habit, which has ruined my health. I am overwhelmed with stoppages and giddinesses of my head, which give me room to apprehend an apoplexy. I have been bled for them; but those who advised me, are sensible they were in the wrong of it. I have a contraction of my breast, and consequently a difficulty of breathing. I have frequently pains of the stomach, and I suffer successively almost all over my body. In the day-time I am heavy, inclined to doze, and restless; in the night my sleep is disturbed and agitated, and does not refresh or repair me. I have often itchings; I am pale, my eyes are weak and sore, my complexion is jaundiced, and I have an offensive breath, &c.”

Another writes me thus: “I cannot walk two hundred paces without resting. My weakness is extreme. I have continual pains all over my body, but especially in my shoulders. I preserve my appetite, but that is rather a misfortune to me, as I have pains of the stomach the moment I have eaten, and throw up whatever I have got down. If I read a page or two, my eyes water, and are sore. I often sigh involuntarily. _Filo xylino flaccidius veretrum, omnisque erectionis impotens, semen quidem, manu sollicitum effluere sinit, nequaquam vero ejaculat, adeo cæterum imminutum et retractum, ut oculi de sexu vix judicare possint._”

The particulars of this case, with the success of my method of treatment of it, will appear, in their place, in this work; and I furnish them with the more reason, for that he was the most weakened and the most governable of any patient I have seen.

A third, who had abandoned himself to this detestable practice, at the age of twelve years, appeared to have suffered even more in his intellectual faculties than in his bodily health. To the following purpose was the account of himself: “I feel (says he) my warmth sensibly diminish. My sensations are considerably dulled; the fire of my imagination greatly slackened; the sense of my existence infinitely less quick; every thing that passes at present before me appears to me like a dream; I have difficulty of conception, and less presence of mind; in short, I feel I am perishing, though I preserve my sleep, my appetite, and am not much altered in my looks.”

A consequence, and not a rare one, of this practice, is the Hypochondrialgia, and if those who are Hypochondriacs, from other causes, abandon themselves to it, all the symptoms of that disorder are exasperated by it, and it becomes incurable. I have seen the most cruel inquietude, agitations, anxieties result from these two causes united; and repeated observations have proved to me, that, in those Hypochondriacs, who are subject sometimes to attacks of delirium, or frenzy, self-pollution always hastens on the fits. The brain, weakened by this double cause, successively loses its faculties, and the patients fall at length into a state of an idiotism, which is never interrupted but by some attacks of madness.

The _Memoirs of curious Naturalists_ mention a melancholic man, who, in pursuance of Horace’s advice, used, sometimes, to seek in wine, a diversion from his melancholy, and who, in the honey-moon of his second marriage, having indulged excessively the pleasures of coition, fell into so dreadful a frenzy, that it was necessary to chain him down[36].

JAKIN, in his Commentaries upon RHAZES, has preserved to us the history of a melancholic man, whom excesses of that kind threw into a consumption, attended with a frenzy, which made an end of him in a few days[37].

It is well known that the epileptical paroxysms, accompanied with an effusion of the seminal liquid, leave a greater faintness and stupor than other fits, without that symptom. Coition will provoke and bring on the fits of that disorder, in those who are subject to it; and it is to this cause that M. VAN SWIETEN imputes the great faintness into which those fall, who have frequent returns of those fits[38]. The late M. DIDIER knew a merchant of Montpelier, who never performed the act of coition without having immediately after it an attack of the epilepsy[39]. GALEN makes the like observation[40]. The Observations of HENRICUS AB HEERS, not to mention many others, attest the like effect[41].

M. VAN SWIETEN knew an epileptic patient, who was attacked with a fit on his wedding night[42].

M. HOFFMAN knew a woman, who was very lewd, and who, for the most part, had a fit of the epilepsy after every act of venery[43].

And here it may not be improper to introduce what M. BOERHAAVE says, in his treatise on the Disorders of the Nerves, that in the venereal ardor, all the nerves are affected, sometimes even to death. He mentions the example of a woman, who, after every coition, fell constantly into a pretty long fainting fit; and that of a man, who died in the act of his first coition, the force of the spasm having instantaneously thrown him into a total palsy. And I find in the excellent work with which M. DE SAUVAGES has lately inriched the physical world, a most singular, and perhaps before unheard of, case of a man, who, in the midst of the act used to be attacked (and this disorder lasted twelve years) with a spasm, which threw his whole body into a state of rigescence, with loss of sense: _Ita ut illum præ oneris impotentia in alteram lecti partem excutere cogeretur uxor, ut evacuatio spermatis lenta flaccidoque veretro demum succedebat, remittente corporis rigiditate_[44].

I know several cases which have some affinity to this. M. DE HALLER has specified a great many, in his remarks on the Institutes of BOERHAAVE[45]; and there are numbers to be seen in the works of other observers.

It has precedently been remarked, that self-pollution would produce this dreadful disorder, and that happens oftener than is imagined: Can it then be surprizing, that the acts of it should recall the fits, as I have more than once seen it in persons subject to the epilepsy; or is it strange that they should render it incurable?

This total rigescence or inflexibility of the body, of which M. BOERHAAVE makes mention, is one of the most uncommon symptoms; I never saw it above once, but then it was in the most consummate degree. The ill had begun by a stiffness of the neck and spine, and successively spread to all the limbs: this was the case of an unfortunate young man, whom I saw some time before his death. Uncapable of lying on the bed in any other posture but the supine one, and without power to move hand or foot, immoveable, in short, and reduced to receive no aliments but as they were put into his mouth; he languished a few weeks in this deplorable condition, and died, or rather went out like a taper, almost without any indication of pain.

I have since seen another terrible example of this total and mortal rigescence, which will deserve a specification here.

On the 10th of February, 1760, I was called to visit, in the country, a man of about forty years of age, who had been very strong and robust, but who had been guilty of great excesses with women and wine, and who had moreover often exercised himself at trials of bodily strength. It was some months precedently that his disorder had begun by a weakness in his legs which made him stagger as he walked, as if he had been drunk. Sometimes he would actually fall down, though on the plainest ground. He could not descend any steps without a great deal of trouble, and hardly durst stir out of his apartment. His hands shook terribly; it was with much difficulty he could write a few words, and those sadly scrawled. But he could dictate readily enough, though his tongue, which had never had any great volubility, began to have rather somewhat less. His memory was good, and the only thing that could make any detriment to his intellects to be suspected, was, that he was less attentive to the _game of draughts_, and that his countenance was a good deal altered. He had an appetite, and slept; but it was with difficulty he could turn himself in his bed.

It appeared to me, that his excesses with women and wine were the primary cause of his disorder, and I judged, that his straining in his trials of bodily strength might be the reason why his muscles were more particularly attacked. The season was rather unfavorable to the employment of remedies, and yet it was requisite, in the mean while, to stop the progress of the disease. I advised him frictions of the whole body, with flannel, and other corroboratives; proposing to myself to augment the doses with the adjunction of the cold-bath, in the beginning of the summer. At the end of some weeks the tremors of his hand appeared some what abated. In the month of April there was a conciliation held on him, in which his disorder was imputed to an accident of his having, about two years before, written, for some months, in a room newly plaistered and damp. Upon this there were applied warm baths, unctuous frictions, powders said to be diaphoretic and antispasmodic; but no alteration for the better followed. In the month of June, a second consultation decided for his going to the baths of Leuk, in Valais: he went, and on his return he had more tremors, and a greater stiffness. Since then (September, 1760) till the month of January 1764, I have not seen him above three or four times.

In 1762, on the credit of some advertisement, he sent for, from Frankfort, the medicines of the _Onania_, which did him no service. Last year, he took others from some foreign physician, but with as little success. His disorder had, from the beginning, made slow but daily advances, and many months before his death, he could no longer support himself on his legs, nor could he so much as move his hands or arms. The embarrassment of his tongue increased, and his voice failed him to such a degree, that there was no hearing easily what he said. The extensor muscles of the head let it continually fall on the breast. He had constantly an uneasiness in his back: his sleep and appetite successively diminished: the last months of his life he could hardly swallow any thing. Since Christmas an oppression came on him, with an irregular fever. His eyes grew dim in a singular manner. When I saw him again in the month of January, he used to pass the whole day, and a great part of the night, in an elbow-chair, leaning backward, his feet extended on a chair, his head falling down every instant on his breast, having always a person standing near him, and constantly employed in changing his attitude, lifting his head up to feed him, to give him snuff, to blow his nose; and to make out, by listening attentively, what he said. The last days of his life he was reduced to pronounce his words letter by letter, which were taken down in writing just as he could articulate them. Finding that I gave him no hopes, and that I only employed some lenitives for his oppression and fever, urged, at length, by a desire of living, he opened himself in, confidence to one of his friends, for his immediately acquainting me of it, as the cause to which he imputed all his illness, and which was his self-pollution, having begun that infamous practice many years ago, and continued it as long as he could; adding, that he had felt this disorder increase in proportion to his delivering himself up to it. This confession he confirmed to me some days afterward, and withal, that it was on this account that he had been determined to send for the medicines of the _Onania_.

Excess of venery does not only produce the languors of chronical diseases, but sometimes throws into acute ones, and always aggravates any disorders that proceed from other causes; it easily produces malignancies, which, in my opinion, are but a failure of the forces of nature.

HIPPOCRATES, in his histories of epidemical diseases, has, of old, left us his observation on a young man, who, after excesses of wine and venery, was seized with a fever, accompanied by the most vexatious and irregular symptoms, and which proved mortal[46].

All that M. HOFFMAN says on this head deserves a reference to it. After having spoke of the danger of the pleasures of love, for wounded persons, he examines that of such as, having a fever, will nevertheless venture upon them. He begins by quoting an observation of FABRICIUS HILDANUS, who says, that a man having had a commerce with a woman, the tenth day of a pleurisy, which had had a favourable crisis from a profuse sweat, was attacked with a violent fever and remarkable tremors, and died the thirteenth day. He gives you afterwards the history of a man of fifty years of age, gouty, and much addicted to venery and wine, who, in the first days of his recovery from a false pleurisy, was attacked, immediately after a coition, with a general tremor, an excessive flushing in the face, a fever, and all the symptoms of the disorder from which he was recovering, but much more violent than the first time, and was in a much greater danger. He tells you too of a man, who never indulged any venereal excesses without having, for many days afterwards, fits of an intermittent fever. He concludes with a case from BARTHOLINUS, who saw a new-married man attacked, on the next morning of his wedding night, after conjugal excesses, with an acute fever, a great lowness of spirits, faintnesses, nauseas of the stomach, an immoderate thirst, lightness of head, want of sleep, and anxieties; but who was cured by rest and some restoratives[47].

M. CHESNEAU saw a young married couple, attacked, the first week of their wedding, with a violent continual fever, with a flushing in the face, which was also considerably swelled: both of them had a great pain in the small of their back, and both perished in a few days[48].

M. VANDERMONDE describes a fever produced by the same cause, a very tedious fever, and attended with the most dreadful symptoms, but of which the issue was more happy than in the case adduced by HIPPOCRATES. I will not here recite the description of it, because of its length; but I earnestly recommend to physicians the reading it in the work itself, which is now easily to be come at any where. I shall subsequently and in another place speak of the method of cure.

M. DE SAUVAGES describes this disorder under the title of the _burning fever of the exhausted_: the pulse is sometimes strong and full, at others weak and low. The urines are red, the skin dry and hot, the thirst considerable. They have nauseas, and cannot sleep[49].

In 1761 and 1762 I saw two young men both very healthy, very strong, and vigorous, who were attacked, the one on the next morning the other on the next night of their respective weddings, with a violent fever, without any shudder, their pulse quick and hard, lightness of head, many slight convulsive motions, an intolerable restlessness, and the skin very dry. The second was extremely thirsty, and made water with great difficulty. I imagined, at first, that an excess of wine might have some share in these accidents, but I was fully convinced to the contrary, at least by the second. They were both of them cured in about two days time, a circumstance, which, joined to the epoch of their disorder, and to its symptoms, leaves no doubt about the cause of it.

Careful observations and sad experience have taught me, that acute disorders were always very dangerous in persons accustomed to self-pollution; their progress is commonly irregular, their symptoms unaccountable, their periods interverted. The constitution affords no resources; Art is obliged to do every thing, and as it never procures perfect _Crises_, when, after a great deal of pains, the disease is got under, the patient remains rather in a state of languor than of recovery, which exacts a continuation of the most assiduous care, to hinder him from falling into some chronical disorder.

I find that FONSECA has already stated this danger. “Many young persons (says he) and those very robust ones, are either attacked, after excesses with women, on the same night, with an acute fever that kills them, or fall into grievous disorders, of which they find it a difficult matter to be cured; for when the body is weakened by venereal excesses, if it should be attacked with an acute distemper, there is no remedy[50].”

A young lad, not quite sixteen, had abandoned himself to self-pollution, with such a rage, that, at length, instead of seed, he only brought blood, of which the emission was soon followed by excessive pains, and by an inflammation of all the organs of generation. Happening to be in the country, I was consulted. I ordered extremely emollient cataplasms, which produced the effect I expected from them: but I have since learnt, that he died soon after of the small-pox; and do not in the least doubt of the hurt he did his constitution by the fury of that infamous practice, having much contributed to render that distemper mortal. What a warning should not this be to young people!

All those who have sometimes occasion to have the venereal disorder under their cure, know that it frequently becomes mortal, in such as have had their constitution impaired or worn out by frequency of debauchery. I have seen the most deplorable objects in that way.

SECTION V.

_Consequences of self-pollution to the female sex._